Broken Arrow
by Thorne Lockehart
Summary: Serial killers are 85 percent men, 15 percent women. New York is her playground and the game this killer's playing is one with no clear winner. Established DL, budding Flack/OC
1. Chapter 1

_Open your eyes up, step in the ring_  
 _Float like a butterfly, bee I sting_  
 _I'm like Snow White with a gun_  
 _Shoot you down, bang bang_  
 _You're done_

 _The Veronicas — Did You Miss Me? (I'm A Veronica)_

* * *

New York had something for everyone. It was a melting pot of so many different cultures, one could feel like they've traveled to a different country by simply sharing a sidewalk with someone or turning a corner. It was also a hub of every kind of man in the world. Men who willingly cheated on their wives, girlfriends, significant others, and men who blindly followed an attractive photograph on faith. The chair squeaked under her slight weight, the smell of scented candles filled the air along with baked bread. Any ordinary woman would swoon or feel nervous about being in the terrace of Jean Georges or feel pressured into "putting out."

Not her.

A crystal wineglass of Merlot sat before her on a pristine white tablecloth, a basket of warm bread sitting between her and an empty matching eggshell white chair. Her date was running late and she found herself growing increasingly irritated. Tonight was _her_ time schedule, not his.

Finally, he came into view. A full thirty pounds heavier and a good six inches shorter than his online dating profile suggested, significantly less hair than said picture as well. Fifteen years older. He looked more like George from _Seinfeld_ than Ted Danson from _Cheers_ like his picture led her to believe. She spotted the tan line on his left hand. Married. Figures.

"Alan," she greeted him, her tone a smooth, seductive purr as she stood up, her pale, corn-silk blonde hair falling around her slender shoulders.

"Linda," he responded, covering her much smaller hand in his. She tried not to cringe at the lascivious glint in his dark eyes or the amount of hair he had on his pudgy knuckles. This man was cheating on his wife. Just by looking at him, she could tell he was in a white-collar job, but lower tier. A worker bee. There was a fray in his buttonhole, signifying that he had recently put on weight. "I must say, your photos online do not do you justice."

It would be all too easy to get him alone. He was almost pinching himself to make sure she was real and not some catfish.

"Nor do yours," she lied as she took a seat back in her chair and crossed her long, shapely legs. She took a small sip of her red wine and waited until he looked down at his gaudy gold watch on his wrist before spitting it back into the glass. No drinking on dates. She needed her wits about her for tonight. "Shall we toast?" she offered.

* * *

Flack couldn't ever get used to crime scenes, not even after years of doing the job. Though if he was no longer surprised by humanity's capacity to slaughter someone, especially of this magnitude, he needed to find another career path. Someone had all but played in the blood of this John Doe and if he put up a fight, it wasn't much of one. He stood in the motel room of the Motor Inn as the team snapped photos and collected trace. The room itself was most likely contaminated, thick curtains reminiscent of a bus seat or an old woman's house, stale cigarette smoke stagnant in the room, and smelling like cheap cologne.

"I don't know what good collecting trace is gonna be in this place when it's a _motel_ room and something tells me cleanliness is not their first priority," Lindsay remarked, crinkling her nose as she set her sample in the case.

"I'm going to cringe when I shut off the lights and turn on UV. I am _never_ going to stay in another hotel for as long as I live," Isabella agreed in disgust from behind her camera.

"Monroe, Cross, I got news for you both. Hotel housekeepers are a formality in New York. You want something clean, you stay at the Four Seasons," Flack snorted. This was why he didn't stay in hotels and why he didn't travel. Travel was a hassle. "I'm still expecting Cross to end up on _Hoarders_ because her place is a damn pigsty."

"Hi, kettle? This is pot. By the way, you're black," she quipped without looking at him, her already thick Southern accent dripping with sarcasm. It was unprofessional to snark back and forth in a bloody crime scene, but he couldn't help it. Isabella Cross made it too easy, that famous temper of hers that made her mouth work five seconds faster than her brain and that simple flaw had gotten her into some pretty trouble in the past.

"Do I have to separate you two?" Lindsay teased from her station by the vanity.

"He started it," Isabella protested beside Flack, nudging him playfully with her elbow. He nudged her in return and turned his attention back to his notes.

A driver's license was soon plopped on his notepad, the one left at the desk. Alan Bosenko, 45.

"Our vic's name is Alan Bosenko, 45, with an address in Midtown," he informed them, flipping over the license to double-check its authenticity.

"I've got a wallet here, beat to shit and held together with duct tape. Credit cards and cash are gone, but there's pictures and a gift card with a signature of Alan Bosenko on the back. He's married, or was," Isabella added, holding up said worn wallet. "You'd think a guy with an address in Midtown would be able to afford a wallet that's not held together by the skin of its teeth. Also, I got a picture of three kids."

"Recently separated or married. I got a tan line on his left hand and no ring," Lindsay said from her perch by the bed. Even after all these years working alongside the crime lab, he still didn't understand the whole science behind it.

"Juliette's got a gun." Isabella's random decree had Flack and Lindsay turning to eye her quizzically to see her holding up a white bottle with the plastic top smashed. "Perfume. Whoever our mystery woman is, she's got some expensive taste in perfume. This stuff goes for a hundred and thirty bucks. I get body spray at Bath and Body Works, three for fifteen."

"You thinking high-class hooker?" Flack inquired. Isabella shook her head as she dusted the bottle for fingerprints.

"See his shirt? The buttonholes along the chest where he's the thickest is freshly frayed. He's a white-collar guy but he's lower-tier and he's gained weight recently. If he's separated or recently divorced, that's likely the cause for the weight gain and he probably can't afford all new shirts. If our mystery woman is a hooker, he didn't hire her. I'm thinking gold-digging black widow and she killed him when she realized he didn't have a ton of money or he demeaned her."

Isabella and Lindsay were by far two of the most intelligent women Flack had ever met and their combined smarts often had him reeling, but the former occasionally missed a thing or two.

"She played in the blood, Bells. She knew exactly what she was doing," he reminded her.

"Fifteen percent of serial killers are women. If our mystery woman is our killer, there's no way she's going to stop at one."


	2. Chapter 2

_Mayday, mayday, the ship is slowly sinking  
They think I'm crazy but they don't know the feeling  
They're all around me, circling like vultures  
They wanna break me and wash away my colors_

 _Starset — My Demons_

* * *

It didn't matter how many steaming hot showers Isabella took, she couldn't get the residue of the Motor Inn off her pale skin or the batter-like feeling of Alan Bosenko's blood off her hands through the latex gloves. There was something different about this case and she didn't know what it was. Something in it set off her intuition, like she needed to tread carefully and double-check everything. Danny had called her paranoid. Flack had a similar feeling.

Instead of dwelling, she threw the blue bouncy ball against the thick glass wall of her office and caught it in an outstretched hand. One foot propped up on the opposite chair to help her keep her balance. Thud. Smack. Thud. Slap. It was an asynchronous rhythm, depending on how pissed Isabella felt with each curve of her wrist to throw the ball. It varied from mildly irritated to wishing the glass partition would shatter. A knock on her door broke her concentration and she turned, fingers still curled around said ball to see Adam flinching.

Isabella lowered her foot from her opposite chair to sit up and set the ball back into her desk drawer. "Sorry," she murmured, kicking the drawer shut and tucking a lock of chestnut hair behind an ear. Adam visibly relaxed, seemingly almost relieved she hadn't thrown the ball at him. He had become less jumpy once he relaxed into his role, but Isabella did her best to ease some of his inner turmoil. "I hit a dead end with Alan Bosenko's cards. He had partially digested oysters but it's damn near impossible to find out _when_ he ate them. Sid hit a dead end, too. It's not your fault. And whoever killed him erased his phone history and destroyed his laptop."

Judge Reinhart was dragging his feet on his subpoena for his work computer. There was normally _tons_ of stuff on work computers, including (hopefully) a clue on how he met his killer. Isabella had dealt with some demented women in her time, but she'd never dealt with a serial killer who played with in their victims' blood since Henry Darius. Until more surfaced, she only had a gut instinct that this was a female serial killer.

"We were able to isolate a kind of exclusive wine Bosenko drank from a place called Jean Georges in the Upper East Side. Their head chef never creates the same menu twice but Alan Bosenko paid in cash," Adam reported, flipping the tablet around to show Isabella. She strode to the other side of the room to get a better look. Jean Georges.

"The finest wining and dining of all the wines and dines in the big city," she remarked with a quirk of her well-groomed eyebrow. "Looks like Flack and I are gonna have to take a stroll in Snob Hill."

Blue eyes lifted to see the petite, willowy form of Kendra Wilson lingering in the doorway. She looked more like a model than a cop, with her long, natural jet-black hair pulled back into a tight bun. Her dark, cat-like eyes were framed with naturally long eyelashes and a flawless olive complexion. She often looked more like a woman in her late teens instead of late twenties with very little makeup adorning her feminine features. Kendra didn't try to infiltrate the boys' club and instead focused on her job. With how many of the women on the police force, it was refreshing to see someone who wanted to do her job instead of worrying what other people thought of her. Isabella respected her for doing her job without truly caring what other people thought.

The NYPD badge hung around Kendra's neck and her body language radiated irritation. Clearly she had been hassled prior to her arrival. "Judge Reinhart approved the subpoena for Alan Bosenko's work computer. I tried to call you, but you're lousy at picking up your phone," she informed her, nodding to the smartphone perched on Isabella's desk. Isabella glanced to see the delayed green light blinking on the upper left corner. In her anger and annoyance, the fact she'd turned it on silent had slipped her mind. "It's a good thing no one found another body."

"Better you came than Flack. I wouldn't hear the end of it," Isabella muttered under her breath as she grabbed her jacket to sling over her arm. As her thumb moved to turn up her volume wheel, Lindsay's number flashed on to the screen. She hit 'accept' and held the phone to her ear. "What's up, Linds?"

 _"I'm at WizCorp where our victim, Alan Bosenko worked. We got a problem, Iz. Just after the subpoena was approved, there was a mass virus and it wiped all the computers in the company clean."_

* * *

It was almost too easy to sweep all remnants of her presence from the hard drives and watch the confusion on the cop's face when Glenn from IT told her about the mass virus. She quickly tapped at the keyboard to wipe hers and stood up from her borrowed desk to stride towards the elevator. Cops were easy to spot. While women were now becoming a more average presence on the force, she could spot one a mile away. All trace of her was erased from Alan Bosenko's hard drive and it was time to move on. She needed another target. As she stood on the elevator, she tucked her hat down more to shield her face from the camera installed inside. Right corner. It was hidden, but it was there.

She needed to make sure she didn't feel too comfortable in her little game; one slip of the wrist and she was done for.

Her thoughts broke when someone brushed past her and a quick glance down at his hand showed the slim yellow gold band on his finger. Blue eyes flickered upwards to catch his steely, gunmetal grey ones. Either new or bored, she didn't miss how they traveled down her athletic figure through the material of her navy sheath dress.

"My apologies, ma'am," he murmured and she covered her hand with his.

"No worries, sugar," she assured him, her voice smoothing into a silky purr. She had a knack for catching when someone undressed her with their eyes and he practically took her in the street. "How about you buy me a drink later to make it up to me?"

"I'm Jack. Jack Collins."

"Linda."


End file.
